Life in Portugal So Far: Softness, Slow Days, and No Regrets

Just me, some church bells, a lot of stairs, and the slow, beautiful mess of building a new life abroad.

Freedom doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it rings every fifteen minutes.

The Bells Were Annoying- Until They Weren’t

Exactly a year and a day ago, I was standing in the VFS office in Washington, D.C., clutching my visa application like a winning billion-dollar Powerball ticket and whispering “God, please let this go through.”

I didn’t know if it would get approved. I just knew I couldn’t keep living the same way anymore.

Fast forward thirteen months, and here I am sitting in my Lisbon apartment, listening to church bells that ring every fifteen minutes.

At first, they annoyed the hell out of me. Loud, constant, entirely too close to my window. Now? They’re my built-in timer. My “sis, you’ve been sitting too long” reminder. My cue to get up, stretch, sip some water, or step outside and let the sun hit my skin. Apparently, this is what time management looks like now.

Just the other day, I realized I wasn’t annoyed anymore. I was being trained to pause. To stop typing. To look up. To remember that life is still happening beyond the glow of my laptop. 

It’s been a few months since I moved here, and I’m still catching up to the pace of my own life and learning what it means to live slow, really slow.

I walk almost everywhere. I listen to my body more. I stop for sunlight.I forget what day it is, and sometimes that’s the best part.

And when I pass the tourists on my street, I smile because I’m not one anymore.  Now I just step around their photo ops and whisper to myself “Excuse me, a local’s coming through.”

Life here has softened me in ways I didn’t know I hardened.  But softness doesn’t just show up, you have to make room for it. 

Pause: What noise in your life might actually be a call to slow down?

The bells that once annoyed me taught me how to pause.

The Quiet That Found Me

I still wake up early, but not anxious. 

I walk to the gym instead of rushing there. 

Sometimes I stop halfway just to breathe in the river air and remind myself, Sis , you actually live here. 

There’s a calm in my body I didn’t know was possible. Like my nervous system finally got the memo that the danger passed.  I don’t flinch at sirens anymore, I don’t rehearse worst-case scenarios in the shower.  I’m not running on adrenaline or defense. 

For the first time in my adult life, I’m not bracing for something bad to happen, not watching my back, not scanning exits, not carrying the constant hum of “be ready” or having my head on a swivel. 

And listen, this isn’t the “self-care Sunday" kind of calm.   This is the kind that comes when you finally get to live in a world that doesn’t constantly demand your vigilance.  That kind of calm hits different when you’ve lived your whole life braced for impact.

Lisbon slowed my body first; my mind , as usual, took the scenic route.  And when I realized that calm was real, like bone deep, “you can unclench now”, real, I didn’t know what to do with it. Because I hadn’t realized how much tension I’d normalized until I felt it leave. 

There’s something about living in a place where I feel safe, where I can walk home at 3am headphones in, no keys between my fingers, no fear humming in my chest.  That kind of peace rewires you. It reminds you that safety should never be a privilege. 

This is what I wish for every Black woman: to know calm that doesn’t have to be earned, a peace that doesn’ t have to be justified, a softness that doesn’t have to be explained. 

This calm isn’t silence.  It’s my ancestors exhaling through me. It’s every woman before me whispering. “Rest now baby. We got you.”

When I first watched Waiting to Exhale as a teenager, I thought it was about  love and men and heartbreak.  

Now I get it. 
It was about the moment Black women finally stopped holding our breath.  

The moment we unclench, not just for ourselves but for each other. 

Because when one of us exhales, it makes space for the rest of us to breathe too.  

And that’s what this life here has become, one long, steady exhale I didn’t know I was holding. 

My hope is that somewhere, another Black woman reading this lets her shoulders drop, even just for a breath.  Because I know this kind of ease is a privilege.  Everybody doesn’t get to rest yet.  The world is heavy.  We carry it all, the news, the worry, the rage and somehow still find a way to laugh, to live, to love. 

So if reading this gives you even one breath of peace, take it.  You deserve that.  We all do. 

Pause: What would it take for you to stop holding your breath.  In your body, in your joy, in your life?

Soft mornings, steady pace

The Slow Days

Listen. Portugal’s bureaucracy will test your faith. 

I’ve tried four times to get my social security number. Four. 

Each visit, it’s a new reason, new paperwork, new “come back next week.”

By the fourth time, I just laughed and said, “Okay God, I get it. Patience is the lesson.”

The good news? As of October 6, I’m finally documented. Officially(-ish).  At least enough to travel again without holding my breath at the airport. 

Freedom; but please make it stamped, laminated, and bureaucratically blessed.

But here’s what Portugal keeps teaching me: slowing down isn’t punishment.

It’s protection.

It’s the universe’s way of saying, “You’ve rushed enough for one lifetime. Go and sit down somewhere.”

Even grocery shopping had me unlearning pace. So last week, I decided to make groceries for 10 days.  I’ve got a work trip coming up on Tuesday, and I figured I’d get ahead of things.  Ten days worth of groceries. The biggest haul I’ve ever done.  

And the moment I started lugging those bags up nearly fifty stairs to my apartment, I knew I’d had a terrible lapse in judgment.  By step twenty, I was repenting.  By the time I made it to the top, I questioned every decision that led me here.

Still, Portugal had the last laugh.  Half that produce didn’t make it past day four.  Lesson learned: some things aren’t meant to be carried all at once.  

Here nothing wants to be rushed.  Not the people, not the produce, not the process. You take what’s ripe, you enjoy it while it lasts, and trust there’ll be more when you need it. 

But let’s talk about the real crisis. No amount of fresh, local produce makes up for the absence of lemon pepper seasoning.

I found some here.  It’s…fine.  It’s giving ‘distant cousin’ not ‘immediate family’. 

And don’t even get me started on lemon pepper wings.  Extra crispy, flats only.   Atlanta may test your patience, but she got that one thing right . Portugal may have olive oil and vinho but nobody does lemon pepper seasoning and wings like Atlanta. Nobody. 

My Atlanta peeps, I am open to care packages (hint: Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market Lemon Pepper Seasoning, no salt)

That’s the kind of humor I have to hold onto here. The ability to laugh when nothing goes as planned and to release control when the answer is “come back later”.  Every ‘not yet” is teaching me how to breathe, how to wait, how to trust that the next step will come.  Maybe not on schedule but right on time.  

Pause: What are you holding onto from an old season that still adds flavor to your new one? Where are you being asked to slow down and are you fighting it or flowing with it?

Three-day groceries, maximum!

Finding My People (Again)

Somewhere between the grocery runs, the paperwork lines, and the slow mornings, I found my rhythm and my people.

That’s the thing about being a Black woman: you find each other. Always. 

In grocery aisles, at dinner tables, on random rooftops with bad WiFi and good wine. 

Drop a Black woman anywhere in the world and somehow she’ll end up surrounded by other Black women. Before you know it, there’s a brunch plan,  a WhatsApp group chat, and somebody’s playlist already queued. And just like that, a sisterhood forms.

We don’t wait for home to appear, we become it.  We turn a “hey sis” into a whole ecosystem by dessert. It is truly a gift. 

I’ve been to dinners that turned into dance parties, birthdays that became all-night laughter , and Sunday brunches that turned into soul talk before the plates were cleared.

It’s the kind of joy that doesn’t need explaining. Because we get it.  We’re each other’s mirrors.  Proof that softness and joy aren’t rare, just underprioritized.

I still work hard (don’t get it twisted), but I make time for people in a way I didn’t before.

Back home, life moved fast. We had community. Beautiful. Solid. Loyal. And sometimes we were too busy surviving to fully sit in it.  Too tired, too booked, too “maybe next weekend”. 

Here, that same love has more room to breathe.  As an immigrant, you don’t have the illusion of “later.” You build your people now because you have to. And honestly, that’s the kind of urgency for which I am grateful. 

That’s one of the many gifts of this chapter. Realizing I didn’t have to cross an ocean to consistently be in community. I just had to stop letting hurry decide what mattered.  Here I’m reminded that the village isn’t gone.  It’s just waiting for us to make time for it again. 

Pause: Who are your people, the ones who remind you to laugh louder, stay longer, and stop rushing through your own joy?  When’s the last time you called them, just because?

Making time for joy, for laughter, for each other

The Real

Let me be honest though, even paradise has its nonsense. 

So picture this. It’s 7am.  I’m walking to the gym in my Savage x Fenty leggings, minding my business.  

The peach was…in full bloom.  Let’s just say that. 

Then out of nowhere, this man, clearly led by poor decision-making and zero home training, decided to smack me on my ass.  

Sir.

It’s 7am. The Holy Spirit isn’t even clocked in yet. 

I turned around, looked him dead in the eye, and let’s just say he got the message verbally and physically (yea I pushed him down, I had the competitive edge).  

Even in a country as calm and safe as this one, the nonsense still finds you. 

The difference is me.  I don’t carry it home anymore. I don’t replay it in my head.  I don’t let it take root. 

Peace doesn’t mean silence.  It means knowing what deserves your energy and what doesn’t earn the right to ruin your morning.  That’s what freedom looks like somedays: not walking away untouched, but walking away unbothered.

Pause: What’s something that used to ruin your whole day that now just earns an eye roll and a deep breath?

The peach remains undefeated

The No Regrets

And that’s the thing. This life here isn’t perfect, but it’s peaceful. And for me that’s enough. 

I still have bills, deadlines, and emails that don’t answer themselves.  

But I wake up slower now. 

I get sunlight before I open my laptop. In fact, my Vitamin D levels are above normal range now! 

The church bells still ring every fifteen minutes, not to annoy me but to remind me: you made it here. 

No regrets. Just joy. 

I’m still working, still building, still showing up.  But I’ve stopped letting work be the only thing that defines me. I give just as much energy to my joy as I used to give to my grind. 

I make time for people.

I say yes to the invites, even the last minute ones. 

Like yesterday. I was mid-edit on this very post when someone texted about a Spades game.

Old me would’ve said, “I can’t, I’m working on something.”

New me closed the laptop and said, “Save my seat.”

And I’m glad I did.

Because joy doesn’t reschedule itself. You either meet it or miss it.

This is what I came here for, not to escape but to remember.  That Black women deserve to be well, not just holding it all together.  That we deserve mornings that start with ease, not urgency.  That rest isn’t a reward, it's a right. 

That’s what Lisbon is teaching me. Not how to change my life but how to actually live it. 

I don’t know what I’ll write about next — maybe my trip next week, maybe the truth about losing 100 pounds.

But whatever it is, I promise it’ll come with laughter, a little reflection, and probably a glass of vinho verde in hand.

Pause: What’s one thing your life has been trying to remind you of that you’ve been too busy to hear?

Softness. Slow days. No regrets.

Staying Found

A year ago, I asked for permission to begin again. Now, I’m living the answer. 

Portugal didn’t make me new. 

I’m still ambitious. Still thorough. Still a woman who loves a good checklist. 

I’m still me, just quieter on the inside and louder on the outside in all the ways that matter.

Freedom found me and these days, I’m learning to stay in its rhythm.

I know the world is heavy right now.  The States are wild, and as always, Black women are carrying more than our share. 

So if you're reading this from the middle of your storm; know this, this joy isn’t me escaping you.  It’s me holding a place for you. 

My hope is that my exhale reminds you to take your own.  That somewhere between these words and your world, you feel seen.  Held.  Remembered. 

Because freedom isn’t selfish. It’s shared.  And even now, across oceans and time zones, I’m breathing with you.

Thank you for being here, for reading, reflecting, and exhaling with me.  

If something here met you where you are, I’d love to know.  Drop a thought, a whisper, a “me too” in the comments;  I read them all. 

With much love,

JW